By Becoming a Bird

<p>I believe that the short story differs from the book in the same way that poetry does and that the best stories are more like poems than novels.</p> <p>Brief stories seem to be more concentrated - hand grenades of ideas if you will. When they function you never forget about them because they hit and explode. A lot smokeier and less defined than short fiction long fiction has a distinct atmosphere.<br/>A vignette sliver or fragment of a short story. Although it serves as a biopsy of the human situation it is incapable of independent thought.</p>